Here’s a dark scenario: You live in a busy city such as New York, Toronto, Halifax, even St. Johns. You lock your apartment door even when you’re home; you hear gunshots in the night, and work in a minimum wage job you hate, because no one seems to be hiring. You want a family but can’t find people of similar interests; you want to go to university but can’t afford it. You mean to recycle, but you’re so burned out after working overtime that you use paper plates just to get to bed sooner… only to wake up and return to that loathsome workplace.

During your restless sleep, on a lumpy mattress, in a poorly ventilated room of plaster and artificial light, you warily dream of a different life, but you won’t remember it the next day for your own sanity upon waking. You’ve even humored yourself by thinking about starting a family, with the right partner, but the last thing you want is a child growing up where you’ve been living lately.

There is a better way.

Tir Tairngire: an Irish legend of a place that the magickal Faerie folk call heaven, environmental unity, freedom from conflict, and even illness. This is a legend; this is a dream; this is my objective.

The global marketplace has begun to drift dangerously towards a disposable consciousness; flash drives, plastic cars and Styrofoam packing on everything you buy. For thousands of years humans lived differently, without plastics and drywall and gasoline and landfills. The answer to these and other problems isn’t to be found new gadgets or technology, but in olde-world logic and new-age morality.

Rather than homes built of petroleum plastic and dwindling wood resources, I propose a construction technique that has become all but perfected in recent years, the rejuvenation of discarded shipping containers and the creation of stronger, cheaper, more easily portable housing units for rapid assembly in any number of applications from emergency shelters to residential and commercial units alike.

Wind powered, designed as efficiently as is feasible, and improved with every creation, housing units can be assembled quickly and effectively, with minimal groundwork. Coven Enterprises will provide the industry to the world, and create a community using these ethics to prove that such principles are effective. Maintenance-free housing is only the beginning however, and with these foundations, other miracles become possible.

Olde-world logic cannot end in earth-first construction and recycling of steel boxes, such steps are incremental but only the beginning. Large-scale all-organic greenhouses will feed the community as it grows and evolves; private water and sewer designed with the growth and demand in mind. Private education, first-stage medical care and protection from crime and fire are also designed into the village infrastructure.

While I agree generally with the idea of living with a smaller environmental footprint, and especially with building using nontraditional materials, the inclusion of 'flash drives' as part of a disposable culture is nonsensical.

Solid state drives (commonly called flash drives or thumb drives) are actually more environmentally friendly than the older technology that they replace.A 1-Gig SSD replaces 728 3.5" floppies, and takes much less energy to use.

I just chatted with the owner of the Tir Tairngire forum, and he's happy to have folks come over an aid in the design process. They're looking to 'build' a community that will have a low ecological impact and high sustainability.

They're also looking to build/foster a 'community' atmosphere, and they've got places to discuss all of that too ...